Technical Field
The embodiments herein generally relate to communication system, and, more particularly, to a hybrid form of low power synchronous and asynchronous communication system.
Description of the Related Art
Communication is the transfer of information between two or more points that are not connected by an electrical conductor. A low power network allows networked devices to run on batteries. Nowadays network devices can be mobile (hand held device) and can be placed in locations where there is no direct electricity supply. This is more necessary in today's life where day to day things are connected with the internet. There are various applications being used for example home automations, security and sensor networks likewise. A network usually consists of one master and multiple devices or nodes. The master and the nodes communicate on a specific channel. In the network device, communication between master and nodes over a medium typically consumes most of the power. For example, a node communicating over radio frequency (RF) will consume most of it power during RF activity. A radio frequency (RF) reception and transmission consumes large amount of power and less power will be conserved. The radio in the node is turned OFF periodically to reduce the consumption of power. The nodes turns ON for a small amount of time to reduce the consumption of power, does required actions and then turns OFF again. Since each node is in OFF state most of the time, the power consumption is reduced by the factor of (ON Time+OFF Time)/OFF Time. Low power networks architectures like Zigbee and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) are based on the principle of polling. Principle of polling means when the device wakes up, it tries to communicate with the master device and checks if the master device has any relevant data for it. Once the necessary action is over, network device goes to sleep again.
The reduction in power is directly proportional to the sleep time of the network device. This has direct effect on the responsiveness of the network device. The problem with the existing networks is that the low power is advantage is traded-off for better responsiveness. Since the overhead associated with each polling cycle is large, the power advantage is greatly reduced if the device has to be more responsive. For polling, each device has to transmit after wake-up. If there are many devices in the network, the RF activity proportionately increases resulting in higher chances of collisions and eventual clogging of network. Collision may force the network device to be ON for longer duration and therefore increases the power consumption of the network device in the network.
Thus, the existing communication networks are not highly efficient in reducing the consumption of power, if they have to be responsive. Accordingly, there remains a need for a low power, low cost, reliable and secure communication system for network devices that can run efficiently on battery power without degrading their responsiveness.